Employee tenure is becoming increasing hard to improve. There are new and exciting start-up companies, more earning potential and increased benefits elsewhere – how can you compete? Studies show that people would rather have the opportunity to grow and improve as opposed to having higher salaries and benefits – so what are you waiting for? It’s time to work towards up skilling your work force.

Up skilling is sometimes a challenge with particular people – not everyone is open to growing, and this is the attitude of failure. We have all experienced different attitudes to failure – it’s a fight or flight situation. Where some grow, some fail and give up – it’s all a matter of mind set. In an ideal world everyone in our team would have a growth mindset – so is it unrealistic to think that they can? How can we change our employees mind sets so they have the ‘fight’ mindset over the ‘flight’ mind set, or in Dr. Dweck’s terms a growth mindset over a fixed mindset.

‘Dr. Dweck studied fixed mindset over growth mindset and found that teaching habits had a profound effect on whether people felt they could progress or not. She found that when you believe you can grow you behave differently. For example, a group of people were taught how the brain changes and that intelligence is malleable and in turn their maths grades increased.’

The same practise can be used in professional environments. Teaching your team that their mind sets can be changed, and that failure should not prevent them from growing is the first stage. Everyone wants their teams to grow and be better than the year before, but we can only do this if we believe they can and that they believe they can.

The Leaders Vs. The Managers

‘Fixed-mindset leaders, like fixed-mindset people in general, live in a world where some people are superior, and some are inferior. They must repeatedly affirm that they are superior, and the company is simply a platform for this.’

If you’re serious about improving the mindset of your team you need to become a leader over a manager – don’t be scared of people becoming more successful than you – your role is to lead people, not be in competition with them. You’ll be a lot more successful supporting your team over being a dictator.

Training sessions

Workshops and training sessions are the first place to start when teaching your employees something new. It’s not only important to work towards changing mindsets but it’s also important to inform them of how they can grow and what is available to them to allow them to grow. Does your company have learning platforms, course bursaries or self-improvement allowances? Without platforms to grow people’s growth mindset can quickly diminish.